India's multinational oil company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is all set to double its gas production capacity in the next five to six years, buoyed by its investments in new technology. Use of new technologies has bolstered monetising its gas assets this year, said Dinesh K. Sarraf, chairman and managing director, ONGC.
The oil and gas exploration major also expects the high rate of monetisation from these gas fields to help the government achieve its target to cut oil import volumes by at least 10 per cent till 2022.
"In the past three years, despite oil prices tumbling to record lows, we have not only sustained production from our existing fields through incremental inputs, but also taken large meaningful and calculated investment decisions to ensure sustained volumes and financial growth," said Sarraf, talking to reporters on Friday.
Sarraf also said the future of clean energy in India looks to be going the natural gas way. “Share of gas in India’s energy basket is set to increase from 6.5 per cent to 15 per cent. The government is focused on making our economy gas based,” he said, sharing insights from Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. ONGC itself is fueling gas discoveries in India as well as neighbouring countries.
Talking about its future plans, Sarraf said many of ONGC’s new projects are gas-based, and capital expenditure on these assets are on par with the firm's investments on oil assets.
“We have flagged off 17 production-related projects with a capex of Rs 76,000 crore in the past three years. These projects would produce 69 mmt of crude oil and 118 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas during their profile period," he said. "Cumulative production from these projects would peak during 2020-21 at 6.65 MMT of crude and 13.38 bcm of gas which is 45 per cent of our oil and gas standalone production during FY17.”
Development of Cluster-2 of KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5) oil and gas block, ONGC’s flagship project, continues to be on stream and all activities are going on at fast pace, he said. “During the last three financial years, we have completed 15 production-related projects (eight brownfield and seven greenfield) with capital investment of Rs 54,000 crore. These would produce 87 mmt of crude and 56 bcm of gas during their profile period,” he said.
Moreover, with the help of US-based oil drillers, ONGC has started to deploy big data analytics to determine reserve and extraction techniques specific to a block's geography. "Oil exploration and production which we do have now moved on to a different curve. There are lots of data that we work with and can now be analysed much better. It is a quicker learning curve for our newcomers too," said Ajay Kumar Dwivedi, director-exploration at ONGC, on the role data analytics has played this year for the oil and gas major.
Among other new technologies, ONGC is also looking at utilising more sophisticated oil rigs which can not only drill but also refine the crude to a certain degree. The company also encourages the use of MOPU (mobile offshore production units) that are capable of refining the crude on board. "These have helped in better onstreaming and faster monetising of assets this year," said Dwivedi on the technological interventions at ONGC.
Sarraf was also vocal about the benefits of the use of new drilling technologies with the help of US-based EPC consultants in difficult geographies like deepwater, high-pressure high-temperature fields.
In the current fiscal, ONGC produced 5 mmt of crude and 3.5 bcm of gas from these new projects, constituting 22 per cent and 16 per cent of its standalone crude and gas production, respectively. ONGC had also made 23 hydrocarbon discoveries with a total reserve of 65 mmt this year, according to a company official. "While our exploration track record has been consistently noteworthy, the fact that we successfully put eight of the 13 onshore discoveries on production within the same year, reflects our desire to immediately monetise these discoveries," he said.
In the last three years, despite declining trends in oil and gas prices, ONGC has consistently paid out dividends of more than Rs 8,000 crore every year to the government and its shareholders.
